Is the hand shaped board going to die off? Does a machine blank make a better surfboard? What will surfboards be like when the generation of guys that can hand shape a surfboard get up in years enough to not work anymore and, or pass on?

These are curious questions for sure. I’ve seen this stuff talked about on a couple of the forums to some degree. No one really knows for sure how things will look in the future but it does make for conversation… good or bad.

Some guys say the machine is replacing the hand shaped board and that it does a better job anyway. But guess what? We get hand shaped boards in my shop for laminating by the best guys in the area and their boards are every bit as clean and balanced as any machined board I’ve seen.

No doubt that the face of surfboard crafting is changing. What will it look like in ten years? Will it change as much in the next ten years as it has in the last ten?

Ten years ago I was working at Hawaiian Blades. Most of the boards we did there went to Japan. Fin systems were starting to catch on but still a lot of boards had glass on fins. There were guys getting machined blanks but no where near what guys are doing now. There really wasn’t much in molded boards going on.

I would speculate that the machined blank will become a standard thing, if it hasn’t already. The cost of machining a blank will most likely be factored into the over all cost of making a board just the same as laminating it is.

Molded boards will continue to take market share but the custom board will still be around. Of course if government regulations limit or restrict the use of materials our boards are made of… but who knows if that will happen?

The thing I like about surfboards now is all the diversity. I saw long boards become completely extinct. I’ve seen the sport get so narrow that if you didn’t have what everyone else had for a surfboard you’d get laughed at. Now you can ride a standard short board, a traditional long board, a fish, a hull or what ever you want and it’s cool. Hopefully that aspect of surfing now will not change in the future.

D.R.

My story post 21

I really didn’t have many friends when I started working at Morey-Pope. By that time I had only been in Ventura for a couple months and been going to school. Sure I was acquainted with some of the guys down at the beach but didn’t really hang with anyone except my friend Peter.

I still remember my first day at MP and the first guy I met at the shop. I had walked back to the shaping area and there was this guy in the very back area of the shop gluing stringers in blanks. As soon as he saw me walk in he came right over to me and said “hi I’m Blinky” and shook my hand. Back then a number of surfer guys where given nicknames. I had really never known any of them but… I’d just met one. Man, I was starting to get to the heart of the culture… though back then we didn’t know that’s what it was.

So I was given the chance to make a living in the surfboard industry. Given a job which I showed up for every day, and began shaping the Morey-Pope models. Penetrators, Eliminators and Coopers model the Blue Machine. I was slow at first but eventually got up to shaping 4 boards a day. All in the nine to ten foot range. I made a killer $4.75 each.

Also back then working at a surf shop was like a regular job. We had regular working hours and if you weren’t there at those hours you’d better have a good reason… not “oh the surf was good so that’s why I’m late or didn’t come in yesterday".

All the workers surfed but we went after work or before. As a matter of fact, during the summer Cooper, Dale Herd, Blinky and myself usually headed out for surf everyday after work. The Point, Stanley’s or a trip down to Secos. Yeah, Cooper was the shop forman and he had a really good work ethic and expected everyone else to have a good one too. We worked hard and surfed after. Get home after dark and just crash. Get up the next day and do it all over again.

D.R.

My story post 20

So there the guy was eating his lunch from a brown paper bag. I introduced myself, still dripping wet from surfing, and said something like ‘you looking for a shaper?’ Cooper and I carried on a short conversation which ended with an invite to come by the Morey-Pope shop on Front St. and show him what I could do.

The next day I went by the shop and found Cooper. He took me into the back of the shop where there were 2 shaping bays. One was being used by Richard Deese and the other one was empty. Cooper got a blank and put it in the empty shaping bay, got a template for a board, told me the dimensions he wanted the board to be, showed me where the tools were and walked away.

So there I was, an 18 year old kid in a pro shaping bay with a big hunk of foam which I was suppose to turn into a nice show room quality shaped blank…. What was I thinking?

I probably spent the next 4 hours sweating my way through the process. Every once in a while Cooper would come by, see I was making progress and then go on about his business. When I got near finished he’d stop me, take a look at what I’d done and point out where he’d like me to make some changes, then I’d go on until I finished.

When I was done I took a break and when I came back got together with Cooper in the shaping bay and went over the board. He said ‘looks like you can shape’ and asked if I’d like to start working the following Monday…. I of course said yes.

D.R.